


Brianna: Character Studies

by missclairebelle



Series: miss clairebelle imagine prompts [1]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-04-27 23:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14436822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: A series of moments between Voyager and Drums of Autumn that study Brianna's relationships with Claire, Jamie, and Frank.





	1. Portrait

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt:
>
>>  
>> 
>> _Brianna travels to Paris after Claire goes back through the stones. There she visits Jared's house and seen a portrait of her parents._  
> 

The loss of Claire Randall to the past was not Brianna Randall’s first loss, but it was the first loss that she had to push through without her mother by her side.

The memories Brianna had of her mother and father ( _Frank Randall_ ) were detailed, vibrant, alive. They moved and breathed in her mind. They smiled back when she smiled first. They were only a photo album away when she needed to refresh her recollection of the particulars: how her father’s earlobe met his jawline or whether he had two or three small lines around his eyes when he smiled, the way her mama and father looked at each other when they were joined by laughter at something their silly daughter said or did, whether the freckle on her mother’s neck was on the left or the right side of her throat.

But Brianna could not clearly visualize the man who drew her mother away: Jamie Fraser.  

All she had was her brain’s crude sketch. A collection of minor details layered in with smudges based on her mother’s idealized descriptions based on memories that were decades old. Brianna never had the heart to tell her mother that the descriptions relied more on  _feelings_  than physical traits.

Brianna did not have the anchor of memory like her mother, nor did she have the guidepost of photographs. And as for her  _feelings_  about Jamie Fraser ( _for_ Jamie Fraser), those were indefinable. Brianna’s vocabulary had not yet evolved to contain the words to describe her feelings. Her _feelings_ remained noisy and red, with an undercurrent of static.  

If reduced to paper, Brianna’s image of Jamie Fraser would simply be a more masculine version of herself.  Once sketched, she would have been staring at a stranger, unable to say whether the nose should be wider along the bridge, the eyebrows closer, the jaw squarer, the lips set in a straighter line.

On the ninety-seventh day after Claire Randall chose to return through the stones to her life as Claire Fraser, Brianna woke alone in a hotel room in Paris. She blinked and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, her limbs heavy and cold.  It took her a moment to orient herself to place and time.  

_Paris. She was in a hotel. She was here to go to the Fraser House._

When they had been searching for traces of Jamie Fraser in history only a few short months earlier, Roger had been the first mention Jared Fraser’s house in Paris. “Could Jamie have gone back there, then? To Paris? To Jared Fraser’s house?” he had asked, holding up a piece of correspondence sent from Paris to Scotland well before Culloden.

“No, we won’t find anything about Jamie after Culloden in Paris,” her mother had responded, her answer quick and her tone short.  Her mother’s voice was firm and her pale skin had flushed pink.  It had a tone of finality that Bree knew well.  “Jamie would never go back there. There was nothing there for us after we left.”

Claire Randall had then artfully changed the subject.

Neither Brianna nor Roger ever again mentioned Jared Fraser or the possibility that Jamie Fraser may have returned to Paris after the Rising.

Brianna left her hotel with only a hand-drawn map, the key to her room, and some loose change in her pockets.

She wandered the streets nibbling on a pastry and sipping strong coffee for what felt like hours.

She checked her watch compulsively and bummed a cigarette off of someone sitting outside of a café.  

She walked, smoking and only sometimes inhaling. She took more comfort in her thumb compulsively flicking the butt or her forefinger tapping ashes off of the tip.

Considering time as a linear proposition in which each person has a discrete lifetime measured in years, twenty-something years had passed since her mother had been to Paris. But _centuries_ had passed in those same decades, entire lifetimes and generations.  Her mother  _had_  walked these streets –  _Claire Fraser_  ( _not_  Claire Randall).  _But when_?

Brianna wondered if she was retracing her mama’s footsteps, her feet landing on the same cobbles and rising over the same stairs. She wondered if she was merely retracing her mother’s footsteps decades ( _centuries_ ) later.

Brianna arrived at Jared Fraser’s house fifteen minutes before the museum opened to the public. She sat on a bench outside of the courtyard, letting her nervous fingers wrap around the cold stone seat, wondering what she was looking for and if she would find it inside.  

Brianna shielded her eyes from the sun and looked up at the house in front of her. She felt like she was looking through a fogged up windshield.

The house had outlasted the onslaughts of the French Revolution, world wars, the coming and going of centuries, and countless inhabitants.  She wondered if the cobblestones in the courtyard were carpeted with moss when her mother lived in the house or whether they had been fresh and bare.  She wondered if her mother had stepped through an entryway illuminated by light from the gas lanterns on either side of the door or whether it had felt like she was disappearing into shadows when she returned home at night.

For a moment she thought about Jamie Fraser, too, not just her mother.  

There had been something intimate about the quietness with which her mother had told her about their coming to Paris: Black Jack Randall (her father’s great-great-something grandfather) and what he had done to Jamie Fraser. Jamie Fraser’s bones were still broken and his skin still growing back together when they arrived in Paris.  When telling Brianna about those months after Wentworth Prison, her mother looked somber. It was as if she were betraying a sacred confidence hundreds of years old. 

“Jamie was  _present_ , but not quite  _there_ ,” her mother had explained, eyes glued to a spot well past Brianna.   His mind had been adrift, the parts of him that made him human hidden away under lock and key.

_This_  was the house that her mother had lived in, with  _him_ , when they fought to destroy the cloak of darkness tossed over their young marriage.  They had slept under this roof, both too idealistic ( _her mother’s turn of phrase_ ) and fighting for each other and for their life together. They were both reckless ( _also her mother’s word_ ) in word and deed under this roof and on these streets. They fought to stop something that fate, in all of its bloodlust, had inexorably put into motion.  

_Culloden_.

The thought of her mother in those early days in this house, trying to fix Jamie Fraser’s pain (all the way down in the marrow of his bones and the contours of his soul), made Brianna draw her knees up to her chest in an effort to fight back a feeling a lot like seasickness.

At precisely 10:00 a.m., Brianna paid three francs to enter the house and, after emptying the contents of her stomach in the toilets, guided herself into the museum.

On the main level, she read about Jamie Fraser’s cousin ( _her_  cousin, too, she supposed).  The details fell through a sieve and barely stuck.

She saw Jared Fraser’s desk, his collection of maps ( _“an enthusiast of cartography,”_ a plaque explained), portraits, and knick-knacks excavated from the bowels of the house.  

She saw Jared Fraser’s bedroom with its imposing black oak four-poster bed and blood-red velvet curtains.  She studied the patterns in the bedroom’ thick carpets (“ _imported from Turkey_ ”) and a huge fireplace charred by fires that had roared over centuries to ward off the cold on rainy Paris nights.  She wondered if her parents ever sat in front of that fireplace, hands held out to melt the chill out of their joints.

Brianna craned her neck to look at ornate candelabras pitted with the outline of dripping wax long scraped away.  The fixtures were retrofitted to illuminate the rooms using electricity; she wondered what the corners of the rooms would look like in the low, flickering glow of overhead candlelight.

She saw bills of lading and contracts signed at the bottom by  _J. Fraser_. The signature had a flourish on the bottom of the “F.” Brianna allowed her fingers to rest on the glass protecting a yellowed paper marked by him, her head feeling like it was floating away from her body.  

It was almost hidden in the transition from one room to the next.  She gave it only a cursory glance at first, her eyes scanning over it and skipping almost immediately to a grander portrait on the wall next to it.

But then she stepped back.  

For a moment, she was struck by the sensation that she had just seen someone she knew in her peripheral vision. Someone who was not really there.

Brianna’s breath caught and she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans.  Her left hand fisted around her hotel key, her grip tight enough that its teeth scored her flesh.

A portrait.

She swallowed hard, barely aware of the tickle of cold sweat blossoming along her hairline.  She stepped closer and read the plaque on the wall. She did not blink or look up at the portrait itself.

_James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, Lord Broch Tuarach_

_Claire Elizabeth Fraser, Lady Broch Tuarach_

_Lord and Lady Broch Tuarach resided in this home beginning in 1743 until the fall of 1744.  James Fraser, Jared Fraser’s cousin, briefly served as the master of this home and managed Fraser et Cie, Jared Fraser_ _’_ _s trading company. James Fraser moved into the home with his wife, Claire, after they journeyed to Paris from Scotland. Under James Fraser’s management, Fraser et Cie, flourished and made several significant international contracts for trade with merchants in Spain and Portugal.  The deals were lucrative for the company and the business relationships forged lasted well into the nineteenth century._

_While in Paris, James and Claire Fraser were integral in efforts to raise support for the Jacobite cause in Scotland, an effort supported by Jared Fraser himself._

‘ _Wrong_ ,’ Brianna thought smugly, her mouth curling into a smirk. The last thing James and Claire Fraser did in France was drum up support for the Jacobites.

She kept reading, her smirk falling away:

_In the fall of 1744, both James and Claire Fraser returned to Scotland where James Fraser fought in the Battles of Prestonpans and Culloden._

_This portrait, found in storage when this house was deeded by private owners to the Pont de Camps National Museums Trust in 1949, was painted in late-spring 1744._

_The pose, intimate and unorthodox for the time period, shows Claire Fraser pregnant with the couple’s only known child._

Brianna swallowed hard, her eyes focusing on her mother’s name.

_Claire Fraser._

She found herself unable to look up, knowing at once that  _she_  was not growing inside of her mother in the portrait.  The time period was all wrong. This long before Culloden; it was too early for her mother to be pregnant with her.  

Brianna felt her knees lock and her vision go blurry at the edges.

Another visitor coughed behind her.  She stepped aside, muttering, “ _Sorry_.” She could not find the apology in French.

She finished reading the plaque:

_According to contemporaneous writings of house staff, Faith Fraser, the couple’s only daughter, died shortly after birth._

Brianna fought to take a deep breath but found her lungs unable to draw air.

The cold sweat along her hairline began to trickle, rivulets streaking down her temples and collecting in her eyebrows.  

Brianna counted to thirteen, her eyes closed.  

Then she looked up at the portrait. She  _really_  looked this time.

It depicted her mother– clear whisky eyes, long neck, pale skin, dark hair lifted off of her face in large curls and pulled back with jeweled pins. Her cheeks were rosy and her lips were parted, turned up at the corners only slightly.  She was obviously pregnant – her stomach round and breasts full under layers upon layers of frothy pale blue material.  Her mother’s finely-boned hand, on one finger a tiny silver band, rested on top of a larger hand with long fingers and squared off trimmed fingernails.  Both hands rested on the crest of her mother’s belly.  

Her mother looked younger and more beautiful than Brianna could remember her ever looking.

Brianna stared at the hands, tears burning along her lashes.

_Faith_.  

“Oh mama,” she whispered, wiping the tears off of her cheeks with the back of her hand. She ignored the blood bubbling along the faint gouge marks in her palm.  

The feeling of betrayal over an unknown sister faded almost immediately. It was replaced by an overwhelming desire to hold her mother again. The desire to rest her head on her mother’s shoulder and whisper: “ _it’s okay, you can share it with me._ ”

After a moment, Brianna brought herself to look at the other half of the portrait.

_Jamie Fraser_.

Almost instantly the crude, smudged sketch of the man in her head disappeared.  The man in the portrait replaced it.

She saw her face in his face. He was handsome, for sure.  His shoulders were broad and he made her mother look  _so small_. Only Jamie Fraser had a higher forehead, a stronger jaw, and a slightly sharper nose than Brianna. His eyes were trained on her mother. It was as though he was unable to see anything other than her.  It was _love_  that Brianna saw in the centuries-old portrait.  

She wondered for a moment how long they had to pose for the artist to capture that look in his eyes, how many times the brush had to stutter and restart to get it just right.

Brianna studied Jamie Fraser’s cheekbones, his ears, his lips.  

She touched her own cheekbones, her ears, her lips.

Brianna studied the set of his jaw and the light indentation above the cupid’s bow of his mouth.

She touched her jaw, the indentation above the cupid’s bow of her own mouth. They were different. Her cupid’s bow belonged to her mother. It was something that she had known even before she touched the skin there.

She felt a flash of disappointment at the dissimilarity between her mouth and her father’s mouth, knowing it was ridiculous to feel that way. But it felt like the difference engrafted another decade or two onto the centuries that separated them.

Swallowing hard, Brianna noted that Jamie Fraser’s eyes were slanted and blue, deep set and framed by auburn lashes. Just like hers.  

Jamie Fraser’s ears, slightly too small for his head, matched hers.

Brianna stepped closer to the portrait, her face only inches away from it. She was close enough that she would probably receive a thorough (and not undeserved) dressing down if one of the museum attendants were to come into the room.

She did not care.  Unable to take it with her, she needed to memorize the details.

The Claire Fraser in the portrait bore a striking resemblance to her mother’s likeness. On no other basis, Brianna concluded that the portrait likewise captured Jamie Fraser’s likeness.

It followed, then, that she owed much of her appearance to Jamie Fraser: her stature, her nose, her red hair, her ears, her eyes.

It was just as her mother had told her.

Brianna stepped back and looked around before lowering herself to the floor in front of the portrait.  She pulled her knees up to her chest and just  _stared_ , her mind working at warp speed.

It took a long time for her to stand again and even longer to wipe the tears off of her face.

Face dry, she closed her eyes.

She could see Jamie Fraser in her mind, clearly now.

“Jamie Fraser,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry.  She barely heard herself whisper, just to try out the sound: “ _Da_.”


	2. Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brianna's letter to send through the stones as she says goodbye to her mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
>
>> _Brianna writes a letter to Jamie for Claire to give him when she goes back through the stones.  
> _

Although Brianna Randall had never really _thought_ about eighteenth-century handwriting, she found herself stuck on the subject.

Her mother was going back to James Fraser. It was a near certainty.

And she was fixated on penmanship of all things.

The shapes and the weight of lines.  

The flourishes on letters, unnecessary adornments.

The spacing and the slanting.

The connective tissue between the letters that make up words that beat like hearts on paper.  

The power in a written word’s horizontal and vertical occupation of paper – its size and weight and orientation saying:

_Here I am. Pay attention to me._

Brianna thought about her father ( _Frank_ ) holding her hand at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., when she was just a child.  He had lifted her up to his belly so she could see, his arms tight around her gangly body.  

She thought about those foundational documents now – the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

She thought about her father ( _Frank_ ) laughing in her hair when she said the handwriting looked funny and that the founding fathers should take penmanship lessons with her third-grade teacher, Miss Fink.

She hadn’t recalled that moment at the National Archives before. She hadn’t even been aware that it was a _memory_ until she sat down to write a letter to James Fraser.

Her handwriting on a page – foreign and modern, neat and precise, compact and regular – breathed life into words that Jamie Fraser would never hear from her lips.  

Brianna wondered if Jamie Fraser would read her letter in his head using her mother’s voice – a low timbre, smooth and oozing bedside manner and grace, decidedly English despite years of living in Boston ( _the turns of phrase of her new life were there in some measure, but the accent and cadence remained decidedly English_ ).  

Maybe he wouldn’t use her mama’s voice. Would he come up with something else entirely, maybe even read it out loud, not even speculating on the sound of her voice?  Brianna wondered if Jamie Fraser had ever even _heard_ an American accent.  She questioned for the first time whether such an accent had even evolved into existence during his lifetime.

She took a long sip from a bottle of beer, steeling herself for the process.

Her pen was tentative on the yellow legal pad.

> _Dear Ja_ –

‘No,’ she thought, pulling the first sheet free and balling it up.  She started again, her pen a little surer on the horizontal line of the “D” in:

> _Dear Mr._ –

“Mister Fraser?” she said aloud, furrowing her brow, pressing the pen deep into the dot after ‘ _Mr._ ’  She hated the sound of it – the formality both perfect and horribly misplaced all at once.  

She needed a salutation for a man she would never know but made up half of her: their blood pulsed in her veins and arteries, skin protected their bones (a genetic mash of James and Claire Fraser making up the marrow and the ligaments and tendons holding her together). Her muscles and viscera were created from him, her lungs and heart inside of her ribcage were working remnants of his own heart, his own lungs.

The ballpoint punctured the paper, bleeding blue into the next page.

“ _Well fuck_ ,” she muttered, lifting the pen and ripping two pages from the pad – one piece was pierced by the tip of the pen and an unintentional deposit of ink   blotted a second piece.

Brianna started again, a lighter touch this time:

> _To the father I did not know I had_ –

She could have cried looking at her words, thinking about her father and again slipping into a pit of mourning for him –– her _actual_ father, the man who gave and gave to her everything he had without hesitation, knowing she was not his.

She thought about James Fraser in more of a reverent way – the way she thought of the saints, canonized for good things, to inspire but never really to _know_ firsthand.

She eased the page from the pad centimeter by centimeter. She focused on the quiet separation of the paper from the binding, the curling of the paper’s edge under her fingers.  

She swallowed hard and tried again:

> _To my birth father_ :

Her heart pounded, settled for now on a salutation before she continued.

> _Hi._

“What in the hell, Brianna?” she muttered, brow furrowing at the double salutation – the first hard-fought and awkward, the second just awkward.  

She decided to continue anyway.

> _I have started and stopped this letter at least half a dozen times now._
> 
> _My heart is pounding and my palms are sweating because I have one chance to write to you. I know that I will never get to meet you._ _So that’s only one chance to say everything that I will ever need to say._
> 
> _And that is a kind of pressure I have never experienced until now._
> 
> _I guess we are damned to a lifetime of a one-off, one-way correspondence._
> 
> _Me to you and nothing said in return._
> 
> _As I write this to you, struggling with the things I **need** to say and the ones that I **want** to say, mama is in the next room. She does not know that I am doing this, but she will. _
> 
> **_Claire Randall: Please stop reading this immediately. This is not for you._ **

Brianna traced the pen over and over the directive to her mother until the text was violent on the page – thick, blocky, dark, unmistakable in its prohibition.

The tip of the pen bounced on the paper and Brianna chewed her lower lip.  Her mind was working too fast – the thoughts underdeveloped, unharnessed, and flowing through her without any logical organization, blanks standing in for adjectives.

She wondered how to describe her life to this man and how to describe her thoughts on this entire mess.

Her brain was brimming with a series of filler sounds where words had been when she sat down to write: um, uh, hmm, mmmm.  

She decided to just let it flow – damn the consequences, and just get it out.  

> _My mama can tell you all of the following.  She was the one there, after all, but it is my story, too._
> 
> _I was born on November 23, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts._

“Could just send him a copy of the birth certificate,” she muttered, critical of her opening sentiments.  

> _My mama tells me that it was cool the day I was born, a little rainy and windy. I was a long, skinny thing when I was born.  She can tell you the story of how I came screaming into the world better than I ever could if you want to hear._

What if he _didn’t_ want to hear it? Brianna found her mind skipping – like the needle on a record player bouncing from place to place over vinyl.

Of course he would, she concluded.

She fixed her eyes on a philodendron growing wildly near the window.  It meandered from its stand to the ground in dozens of waxy green tendrils and spade-shaped leaves.  She wondered whether a clipping would survive the journey through the stones or if the science ( _magic_?) of time travel would make it wilt until its dry roots were unable to grip the soil any longer.

> _I went to summer camp when I was little. I learned to fish, start a fire, use a bow and arrow, fire a rifle, row a boat, ride a horse, and make a friendship bracelet._
> 
> _I play tennis with my mom twice a week during the summer; I am better than her and I never let her win._
> 
> _I love music but can’t sing. Since I learned of you, my mama has explained that my tone deafness is your fault. So thank you._
> 
> _I attend a wonderful university – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I study history. I mostly focus on the history surrounding the founding of America (just wait; be happy you’re on the side of the ocean that you are)._

She tapped the pen again – was it safe to send something back with any detail about what would happen in the colonies? What if someone found it? Her mother’s name, his name, were both plain as day in writing. Her brow furrowed and she scratched out the last sentence – her pen rolling over and over the text.

She remembered reading a book where a character explained that if you write the word “apple” over and over text, it becomes indecipherable –– more than if you merely cross out the words.  

Brianna wrote “apple” dozens of times, her wrist and fingers working by rote after the first few passes.  

She inspected the letter.

_Nothing_ – not even _appleappleappleappleappleapple_ – remained.

She took a deep brief, soldering on.

> _I don’t know how to tell you about my father – Frank Randall. I am sure that you will not take any offense to me calling him my father because that is what he was._

Was she sure that James Fraser would not take offense to that? Not really. She did not know the man.  

But this was a one-shot to get what she wanted out – _truth_ , she decided.

> _When you let my mama go – to save me, to save her – you told her to find my father.  She did. And he accepted me and he loved me with all that he had.  He was better than good to me.  I was his entire world.  My mama used to say to my father (not jokingly): You think that the sun rises and sets on Brianna_.

Looking back, she realized that she _had_ been Frank Randall’s world. Claire Randall had been smeared along the periphery. The divide between her parents had only become evident to Brianna when she learned of Jamie Fraser.  It was startling to have the adult realization that her parents’ marriage had been largely loveless. Save the ferocity shared between them when it came to loving a daughter, and maybe a touch of what once was, they did not have a passion for each other.

Brianna did not know what romantic, passionate, consuming _love_ looked like on her mother until a quietly assumed history crumbled – Jamie Fraser was alive and the permanent faraway expression in her mother’s eyes said, ‘ _I would walk through fire for this_.’

Brianna finished off her beer and returned pen to paper:

> _I have known **of** you for twenty days – one day for each year of my life.  I know of you the things my mother tells me.  She wears rose-colored glasses when it comes to you._

‘There’s no way he knows what that means,’ she thought, considering and rejecting the inclusion of a footnote to explain the colloquialism.  

Brianna supposed that her mother and James Fraser would need _something_ to break through the awkwardness that built over decades of lost time between them.

‘ _What better way for them to reconnect_ ,’ she mused, rejecting at once the unbidden graphic image of what they would _actually_ do upon reuniting.

> _I suppose all of this is to say that I owe you a debt of gratitude. You gave me life in more ways than one: you created me, you did what you thought you had to in order to let me live, and I am_ –

Brianna lifted the pen, tapping the end furiously against her front teeth – a rapid _tappa-tap-tap-tappa-tap_ that she felt all the way up in her brain.  She searched for a word and settled on one after a few moments of contemplation –

> _grateful._
> 
> _Know that I will wonder about you always – what you look like, the tone of your voice, what sound you make when you’re skeptical of something (my mama says it’s a “Scottish noise”), the nickname you would give me if you knew me fully, what it feels like to hug you_ –

Stopping, a darkness washed over her.

She would live her life never touching this man and he would never touch her. The closest he would get was pressing a hand to her mama’s growing belly, layers of skin and organs and muscle and fat and whatever protects a baby, separating them. Had he even been able to feel her move inside of her mama ( _the flutter of a life they created_ )?

She returned back, unable to continue with the line of thought.  She put a precise period down before writing again. She wouldn’t list anything else that they would never have together.

> _Take care of my mama._
> 
> _At first, when she told me about the stones and about you and about your_ –

She listed words, picking one at random after swallowing down the others: love, marriage, relationship, life.

> _– life together, I was furious. I did not believe her._
> 
> _It took time._
> 
> _I eventually did believe her._
> 
> _I am ashamed to admit to you, a complete stranger who is bonded to me by the very foundation of life itself, that my change of heart was not because I have some great faith in my mother. It was because I saw it with my own two eyes. I saw someone she claimed to have known in the past slip through the stones, gone into thin air._
> 
> _She told me of you and how she told you of her history – that you believed her instantly, trusting her without hesitation, loving her enough even then to let her go and help her find her way back.  She told me that you released her and that she returned._
> 
> _And I have to say, the story of your readiness to accept and love her made **my** **own** skepticism seem cruel. _
> 
> _That you could believe something like what she told you, hardly knowing her – without reservations, without question…._

She read it, reread it, ran a fingertip over the dry ink and memorized it. The tip of her pen bounced soundlessly on the next line.  

The words came out of her; she did not realize they were true or inside of her until they were down on paper:

> _As her daughter, I questioned her, disbelieved her, thought horrible things about her – that she was lying to cover evasion, adultery. In my mind, she was a liar or insane, perhaps both._
> 
> _Your ready acceptance of her story speaks legions about you, James Fraser. I may not know you, but I know the type of man you are._
> 
> _And that is how I know that when she goes back to you, you will accept her, love her, cherish her like no time has passed._

Brianna’s mouth was dry, she tried to pull from her beer. Only a few, unsatisfying and warm drops dribbled down onto her tongue.

> _My mama has spent the last twenty years caring for me, nurturing me, loving me, healing anyone in her orbit._
> 
> _My mama has been selfless, nurturing, and kind to me.  She has kissed my scraped knees, dried my tears, helped me blow out birthday candles, said my prayers with me at night before bed, baked cookies with me on rainy days, and said she was proud of me every opportunity she could._

Her heart was tight – collapsing.  Her mother was going.   _Really going_.

> _Take care of her, James Fraser. She is the most important person to me in the world._
> 
> _She is all I have left, and she is yours now._
> 
> _This is how I can repay my debt to you._
> 
> _You gave her to me, and now I can give her back._

Brianna was crying now, eyes red-hot and chest tight.

She held her breath, lungs burning:

> _Be patient with her. Love her fiercely. She can only love that way – with her entirety.  Love her completely.  Just as she does you – faults and all (she has a few; I’ve inherited many of them)._

The sound Brianna’s breath made as she exhaled surprised her.

She wrote her conclusion easily, without pausing:

> _Love,_
> 
> _Brianna_

She couldn’t face the prospect of rewriting – polishing, making less raw.  She couldn’t face the prospect of rereading – reliving the words with doubt.  

So she folded the letter carefully, sealed it in an envelope and wrote in neat, even handwriting across the front:

> _To: James Fraser, a father._


	3. New Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brianna settles into her new life at the Ridge and sees her mother in a new light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: __
>
>> _  
>  Imagine Brianna noticing how different Claire is in the 18th century and especially when she is with Jamie.  
> _

There was a certain cadence about Brianna Randall’s life on the Ridge – the routine, the pacing, the serenity, the very sounds of it. The doing of chores was governed by the light at any given moment ( _white in the morning, golden at sunset, fire and flickering and melting after dark)_ and Jamie Fraser’s “ _good morning_ ” and “ _sleep well_ ” bookended her days.

With this routine, it did not take long for Brianna to realize that Claire Randall had ceased to exist.

In Claire Randall’s place was a new creature – _Claire Fraser_.  

Brianna hadn’t known it at first, but it had been Claire _Fraser_ who greeted her when she arrived at the Ridge.  Claire _Fraser_ had kissed Brianna’s cheeks, bruising her skin with a first touch of reunion.  Her greeting was from Claire Randall’s body, but this _Claire Fraser_ was different from its doppelgänger.  

Claire Fraser was at once her mama and she was not.

Claire Fraser’s backbone was made of steel, just as Claire Randall’s had been, but there was a new softness and easiness about her movements. There was a dancer’s grace to Claire’s body while she weeded the garden, covered in dirt and sweat. Claire’s hands moved with purpose while preparing family meals, her hips swaying to songs she hummed that were well outside of their current time.

Claire Fraser was quicker to a laugh, a smile. She was undone in a beautiful way, hair not coiffed and her fingertips more often than not stained with earth.  Claire Fraser’s flesh always smelled of herbs and dirt and grass, not a commercial amalgamation of scents that chemists thought smelled of “springtime.”  

Claire Fraser’s voice was as smooth as her predecessor, but it was softer and slower. Her cheeks flushed rosy and she _glowed_ in quiet moments, looking out a window, a hand coming to cover her sternum. When the Ridge was silent – no rustling of crops, no papery whisper of leaves in the wind, no birds with a song to sing, no squirrels with a chattering story to tell – Claire would get a faraway look in her eyes. Her lips would press together, turning up ever-so-slightly at the corners.

The fingerprints of the last three years had permanently imprinted on Claire’s body.

Claire’s hair was more liberally streaked with silver.  Brianna sometimes saw Jamie touch the strands, a look of marvel on his face.  He would whisper “ _white dove, my white dove_ ” in Gaelic, with a look on his face was like he was seeing his only love for the first time.  The look on Claire’s face, the sway of her body towards him, telegraphed a wonder at his touch, reverence for his words.

Claire’s skin, formerly porcelain with the aid of liberal smears of sunscreen, was freckled along the bridge of her nose, the apples of her cheeks, the curve of her shoulders.  This new Claire was comfortable and lived in, soft linen concealing the shapes of her body until wind or a touch or a bend of her waist brought a curve of her limbs or torso to view again.

Claire’s hands were still those of a surgeon, still capable ( _a healer’s hands_ ), but thinner, the knuckles more pronounced. On the right hand, a thin silvery scar snaked in a jagged gash; Brianna did not know the scar’s origin. Those hands worked over the people at the Ridge – ministering and healing.

Claire’s eyes were lined at the edges. The early lines that had been there when she left Boston were etched deeper.  Brianna imagined that the lines were memorials, drawn to honor the moments Jamie and Claire Fraser spent catching up: countless stories, endless hours of reminiscing, inside jokes so well worn that the stories of their origins were hazy, smiles and touches to make up for the decades over which fate cruelly slashed them apart.

One morning shortly after arriving at the Ridge, Jamie had taken Brianna hunting. She had been an voyeur in a moment between Jamie and Claire as he said goodbye. Jamie had kissed Claire on the forehead.  Her mother’s finely-boned hand touched him in a way that said “ _my love_.” It was a touch that would have seemed grossly out of character for _Claire_ _Randall_ ( _not deceased, but not alive any longer_ ). But the touch was a part of _Claire_ _Fraser_ ( _really living, breathing_ ), like blood or bones or skin or soul.

Life on the Ridge was _close_ – their bodies, their work existing in a narrow place, their continued existence reliant on learning and doing and planning. But their life on the Ridge was also defined by the endless wide-open spaces on the perimeter.  

In this close life, Brianna heard almost everything, saw almost everything.

Brianna knew that in the mornings Jamie would rise first from the bed her parents shared.  He would shake the sleep from his limbs and sigh before turning to her mama.  He would pull the quilts up over her, kiss her gently ( _Brianna only heard, never saw, but in her mind she hypothesized: on her face – a nose, a cheek, a forehead, maybe lips)_.  He would whisper “ _mo nighean donn_ ” and “ _I love you_.” Her mother never stirred or responded, but Brianna knew Claire Randall well enough to know that Claire Fraser was awake for all of it, every morning, cataloging his affections.

Brianna saw their connection when Jamie would come into the cabin, drawn to Claire’s back with fingers grazing her hip and then roving forward to her belly.

From a distance of a few feet, Brianna could see the way Claire’s flesh prickled up and the tiny hairs on her forearm stood at attention when Jamie entered a room too quickly. The door would slam, and there he would be without preamble. The temperature from the outside would cling to him ( _blistering hot or chillingly cold at the extremes, warm and musky on balance_ ) and pulse off of his body.

Jamie always went to Claire first.  And when he whispered into Claire’s ear, his lips would linger close enough that she could no doubt feel his breath, smell the day on his body.

At only the proximity of him, Claire’s fingers would lose the plot and drop whatever Ridge work they held – a medical instrument, a carrot or potato, a knife, a pot, a rag, a piece of firewood. Claire’s body would drift backwards as if unable to resist Jamie Fraser’s gravitational pull, seeking out equilibrium and a connection.

Jamie and Claire would pause in time then, pressed together and suspended only for a few moments. 

In those moments they existed only as Claire Fraser and Jamie Fraser, no one else _._

Claire was _flirty_ with Jamie, shamelessly so.  It made Brianna blush furiously, the tips of her ears would pink and she felt like she was outside of her body. Brianna pretended not to notice Claire’s touches, looks, sounds, turns of phrase tweaked _just so_ to sound lascivious. In a moment when they both clearly believed themselves to be alone, Jamie had asked Claire about churning butter.  Brianna did not understand the reference, but they had both dissolved, hands clutching the other’s face before their lips sealed their laughter in the void between their mouths. She figured it was something she did not want to ask after.

At night, Brianna would sometimes overhear Claire exclaim a words ( _his name, profanity, a plea, a demand_ ) or make a sound of God knows what origin ( _a laugh, a cry_ ).  Brianna would cover her ears and concentrate on the sound of her own breathing. ( _The cabin was so small, they were married and had been apart, she was inexperienced but she wasn’t stupid._ )

“You’re different,” Brianna remarked to her mother one morning. 

Claire furrowed her brow, slathering a piece of dry bread with jam.  

“Oh? How so?”

Brianna had shrugged, unable to put words to the sentiment. She chewed, to the extent that she had to chew the mush of parritch in her mouth.  She swallowed hard, wondering if Claire’s silence was an invitation for Brianna to riddle it out and answer. Claire studied Brianna then, looking just as Claire Randall had over many breakfasts. The Claire Randall who sat across from Brianna over an entire Boston childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood of breakfasts was staring back at her.

“What?” Brianna asked, her voice on edge and her face screwed up.  She felt suddenly defensive and wished she hadn’t said _anything_.

“You are so very like your father.”  

Although it was a near impossibility, Brianna’s brows knit further together.  

“Like _Jamie_ ,” Claire explained.  “It’s not just you who thinks I am different.  Jamie has said it, too. He had the same expression on his face you do now.”

Claire looked thoughtful, like she was replaying the scene in her head.

“I suppose neither of you really know me right now. I am not the person I was when your father and I were new to each other all those years ago. We thought we could change the world. We were so young, so stupid. Jamie in particular.”

She paused again, reflecting.

“Bree, I am not the person Jamie knew – the person I was before I went through those stones, back to Frank and the twentieth century. I’ve lived a lot of years, and lord knows Jamie has lived more than his fair share in that same span.”

Claire smiled slightly now, her expression changing only a little, but it was blurred along the edges.  Her glass face had become inscrutable.

“You were such a beautiful baby, Bree.  Your red hair, your pouty lips.  Even when those lungs were positively wailing, I loved you and thought you were the most precious thing.”

Brianna wiped at her lip and took a sip of water.  Her mother’s words came like she was reading them from a diary of thoughts. They were not secret but had never been spoken. 

Heart pounding, eyes darting from her water to parritch and back again, Brianna muttered, “Yeah, yeah, mom.”

Claire shook her head, reaching across the table and resting her fingers on Brianna’s hand.  Claire’s thumb stroked along Brianna’s knuckles.

“No, Bree. _Listen_.”

Brianna looked up from the table and forced herself to hold Claire’s gaze – it was open, certain.

“You changed me then. As much as coming back here has changed me now. I don’t expect either of you – your Da or you – to know me, really.”

Brianna realized now that the lines near Claire’s eyes were the lines of a contented life, a glass half full, etched over three years. The set of Claire’s mouth was that of someone who gave smiles and laughter easily, whole-heartedly, without reservation.

How had Brianna never realized that the easiness and contentment were absent for all of those years in Boston? She wasn’t sure she _really_ _knew_ her mother – then or now.

“I don’t want you to… oh God… I don’t want you misinterpret what I am saying. I _love you_ , but in life there are buckets.  I went decades with one bucket absolutely overflowing – _you_ , Bree.”

Claire paused, smiled, licked her lips.  She was plucking an analogy from her psychiatry rotation, one that doctors used to explain why emotions can grow, unbounded, like a tumor even when everything seems _just right_. 

“ _You_ were my overflowing bucket.  But here… this Ridge, this awful leaky cabin… I have Jamie. I have you. That’s two buckets, and then I have – there’s the fact that I have my whole family here, and that bucket? Well, it is like an entire sea is being dumped into it.”

Brianna’s body was rebelling: tears collecting at her lower lash line, her palms sweating, her belly clenching and then unfurling, her breakfast sloshing against the insides.

“I know you’ve lost so much – your father –”

Brianna did not need Claire say his name to know that her mama was talking about _Frank_ –

“—and your home.  Roger.”

Brianna felt a hot tear streak down her cheek and then another and another and another until they became a stream. She was well beyond the point of being able to hide them with a tilt of her chin, a manufactured defiance of the emotion welling up inside of her. Brianna furiously wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, willing her traitorous eyes to _just stop already_. Instead, tears came faster until she was hiccupping, choking on words she didn’t have to say.

Claire just kept stroking Brianna’s hand, the pad of her thumb still soft but roughened by the manual labor of this place.

“Your Da, me… we are both different people to each other and it’s because of the years. To him, I’m different because of you. To you, I’m different because of him. But one thing that is true, above all else, is that for the first time, we both have our family here with us. Him, you, me, together.”

Brianna managed to nod, flipping her hand underneath Claire’s hand to bring their palms together.

“We’re all learning each other… ourselves… right now.”

Jamie came in through the door like a storm, sweaty and pink from the early morning sun. Brianna turned to look at him.  His face shifted, the space between his brows disappearing and tension tightening in his jaw.

“What’s the matter, lass?”

Jamie was to Brianna’s side in three steps, warmth radiating off of him. He placed a warm, sweaty hand on her shoulder.

_Her da_. _Her mama. Here. Together. He went to her first._

She shook her head and attempted a smile, turning her wet cheek to rest over his hand. “Nothing at all.”

And it was true.


	4. Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire watches Jamie and Brianna navigate their new relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 
>
>> _I loved the fic with Bree watching Claire with Jamie. Can we get a missing scene about Claire finally seeing Bree with Jamie?? The books did not have enough!!  
>  _

Claire was wrist-deep in dirt, yanking swollen purple beets up from the earth by their fleshy stalks.  She allowed the thump of pride echoing in her chest for _creating_ something out here on the Ridge to take her under for a moment.  

This place was hers.

Jamie had built their cabin on the Ridge.  With it, he had created a space for their new life together to write itself.  His hands built walls that would hear whispered conversations, serve as a barrier to protect tender moments where they joined in love and awe, and shelter their bones warm in the dead of winter.  His fingers, blistered with the work of sawing and hammering, bled into the foundation of their small world.

But out here in her garden, Claire felt like she was nurturing life itself.  Her seeds ( _the size and shape of pinheads or flaky and bristled_ ) grew into a rainbow of colors ( _orange, red, white, green, yellow, purple flesh_ ). And it was only with her care that they did so – creating a brightness and crunch, a lush juiciness, a herbaceous richness to meals that otherwise consisted of bannocks and game meat.  When at the end of the day they came back together over a meal, Jamie’s blistered hands covering Claire’s in candlelight, she felt a wholeness that she hadn’t known was possible.

Claire dug deep, relishing the satisfying sensation of dirt filling the crescent moons of her fingernails. Getting dirty was utterly satisfying.

There, crouched in her garden, with hands scrabbling beneath the earth for a potato, she heard Jamie call for her.

“Claire?” he tested, sounding a little tentative.  His voice was husky, unsettled in a way. She turned, heart leaping into her throat at his unusual tone.

It took her a moment to appreciate what was happening. However, once she did, she felt her knees buckle and her entire center of gravity shift.  Her thigh hit the ground first, immediately hot where the bruise would swell and bloom later.

_Brianna_.

Jamie was walking up the hill with _Brianna_.

Claire blinked once, twice, three times. She shielded her eyes, her dirt-smeared forearm rubbing against her brow. She dropped the potato onto her lap, letting it roll away and forgetting it when she stood. Her thumb and forefinger dug into her wrist, the bones there not yielding but protesting the intrusion with a burst of feeling. She pinched harder, further up her arm. She needed something to bring her down to earth and tell her that _yes_ , _this was really happening, she was not dreaming._

The world did not dissolve in the fluttering awareness of the end of a dream. She was awake and suddenly the realization hit her.

_Bree was here, Jamie was here, they were going to be together_.

A sound resembling a sob strangled her.

Heart whipping wildly, cold sweat pricking up along the back of her neck, mind reeling through fog, Claire lurched to her feet.  Her knees locked again and she attempted one tentative step forward, cursing her feet to _just bloody move_.

From the day she first moment her baby girl in her arms – _a warm bundle of warm pink flesh, solid, with a beating heart and tiny lungs_ – Claire had known that she would never look at Brianna and _not_ see Jamie Fraser.

But she was still stunned by Brianna’s sudden appearance. She was just as stunned at the feeling of watching Brianna and Jamie together. They were walking with even strides, matching each other step for step – made up of unmistakable parts of each other and moving in tandem.

Red. Long. Graceful but _present_ and _intentional_ with each step.

“Bree?” Claire tested her voice and took another faltering step, again willing her legs to _work, just work_.

_Oh Christ_ – she was going to pass out.

“Mama!” Brianna called back, her voice sing-song and light. Claire knew enough of Brianna’s mannerisms, even after a few years’ separation, to know that her daughter’s cheeks were lifting into a smile. Brianna broke into an easy run up the hill and Claire continued to curse her legs to work, to support her weight, to bring her _home_.

Claire looked at Jamie, his head bowing as Brianna took off up the hill.  She wished she could see him – to remember this look on his face.  The look that he would have at the moment their family came together.  Completion.

When their bodies connected with a dull thud, Claire immediately started to cry, her tears and dirt mixing as she sank her fingertips into her daughter’s flesh.  Bree laughed, kissing Claire’s cheeks and in the process smearing her own face with tears and dirt.

“How? When? Are you okay?” Claire was hiccupping. Hands on Brianna’s cheeks, Claire pushed Brianna’s sun-kissed face back just so she could _look_ for a moment.

_Those eyes_ ; _Jamie’s eyes_.  They had been apart for three years now, but Claire had hardly gone a day without looking into those eyes only in another face.

“There’s time for questions later,” Brianna breathed, tucking Claire’s head under her chin and pulling her close.  Claire’s grip ratcheted impossibly tighter into Brianna’s flesh, needing to feel her down to her bones, to pass through the layers of clothes and skin.  

Jamie’s hug pressed into Brianna from behind.  His forehead met her clothed shoulder and Claire heard a sigh come from him – a noise, a release, a shuddering gasp of breath that felt as though it had resided in his belly for twenty-some years.

_They were all home now._

Brianna seemed to fall into her new life on the Ridge with ease – allowing herself to be taken in by the quiet moments.  

One night Claire was startled by the depth of Brianna’s observation about life on the Ridge that it was a _simpler_ life on the Ridge, but that was far from an _easier_ life. Brianna had been frozen in Claire’s mind, unmoving from the day that she had left through the stones to return to Jamie. It took time for her to realize that this _woman_ was not the _young woman_ she had left behind.

They never talked of Boston, of Frank, but he was _there_ nonetheless.

Bree rarely spoke of Roger, but when she did she had a far off look that Claire recognized all too well. It was the same look that Claire had about her in the mirror at least three times a day in the months after she returned to Boston. It was the low look of someone haunted.

For Claire, she had been trying to remember Claire Randall and forget Claire Fraser.

It was unclear to Claire, though, whether Brianna was trying to _forget_ Roger or do her damnedest to _remember_ Roger.

At night, sated with one another’s bodies and just whispering in the dark, Jamie would ask questions. _Why_ did Bree have that look about her with Roger? _What_ was Roger like with her? Had he broken their daughter’s heart? Many of Jamie’s inquiries were met with the best Claire had: superficial answers, silence, a finger tracing the outline of his collarbone. _She just didn’t know._

Instead of the _past_ , they contented themselves with the _present_ , with being together.

And it was more than Claire had ever deigned to allow to play in her dreams: her wishes for a family with Jamie, her quiet reflections over a life for the three of them.

Jamie and Brianna’s process of matching two vocabularies and personalities – constructed in separate centuries, born of separate continents – was ever evolving, sometimes awkward.  

They needed a narrative: one for themselves and another for others not privy to their strange situation ( _time travelers from a country not yet in existence_ ).  At first it was funny – coming up with lies of omission or sometimes flagrant untruths – but eventually it became tiring to keep track of who was told what, what was their new truth.

It took time, something that seemed to chafe at both Jamie and Brianna.  Their frustration with each other, with the lost years, would flare and fizzle.

“ _You wouldn’t understand_ ,” Brianna would spit with a flash of venom when Jamie was even remotely critical.  His face would not crack, but harden and a distant look would come over his eyes.

“ _Aye_ ,” he would respond without fail. “ _Maybe I cannae understand ye_.”

The process of acclimating Bree to the Ridge – to life with her Da – involved meshing their timelines and personalities.  Claire had commented, offhand and dreamily, that they were, for all intents and purposes, strikingly similar.  She had earned a heated glare from each when she said it and bit down on her cheek until she tasted blood as they fell into silence.

The similarities Claire noticed were more than physical. Though, physicality was certainly part of it.

There was the way they carried themselves.  Out of the corner of her eye, Claire would catch a blur of red, a gesture, a movement. She would start to say “ _Bree_ ” before realizing it was Jamie.

There was their height.  Bree stood nearly eye-to-eye with Jamie. She did not have to tilt her chin up the way Claire did when she wanted to look at him, and Jamie did not have to tilt his down to catch her eyes.

When the Fraser stubbornness – endemic to both of them and apparently incurable – took hold, their eyes caught fire straight on one another. The fury was painted blue on blue, and it was unrelenting.  

Jamie and Bree shared the same laugh, with only the pitch differing. The laugh was more than just the crinkle along the corners of slanted eyes and the sound it made. It was the same in physical space – filling a room, consuming any other feeling that dared to exist.   _Laughter_ was in the slope of their shoulders, the half-smirk of humor rising slowly at one corner of a mouth before taking over an entire face. They were carbon copies of each other in the way a laugh died off slowly with a fade to black.

Claire thought that in the quiet moments, Boston and Scots accents tucked away so they could just observe each other, Jamie and Brianna learned the most about one another.

One night, when the washing up was done and everyone was settled, Bree and Jamie were sitting cross legged on the floor across from each other.  Jamie’s broad, callused hands were guiding fiber over knitting needles, carefully instructing Bree on how to cast on a stitch.  

Claire was suddenly struck by the things that Jamie would never get to teach his only living daughter.

There were numerous things that Frank Randall had filed away in his memory that had died with him. Memories that Jamie Fraser would never have, stories that he would never know.

The losses of these memories to Jamie, even though he did not know them, were like a dagger in Claire’s breastbone. It twisted with each breath.  

Brianna had been a child of the 1950s and 1960s.  Some of the losses would rest just beyond the space where Jamie could understand the importance of the moments in their daughter’s life. And that, too, was an independently painful realization.

The swell of pride that Frank felt taking off Bree’s training wheels was foreign to Jamie.  Frank had jogged behind her with his fingers under the seat to balance a bicycle.  When he stopped, dropping his hand, he had let out a long sigh. The breathy sound was one of relief and pride and nostalgia for a smaller version of Brianna, one who couldn’t even ride a tricycle.  Frank had just watched her – white helmet with a yellow flower, pink streamers on the handlebars, white wicker basket on the front, a queen of hearts playing card pinned to the wheel snapping along as she pedaled down the tree-lined street.

Claire was unsure whether Jamie would have kept his fingers balanced under that seat longer ( _protectiveness winning out over the knowledge Brianna was **fine** and **scrappy**_ ) or if he would have let her go sooner ( _confident his daughter’s ability to stay upright, a lesson in a skinned knee to be learned_ ).

Claire recalled the easy confidence in Frank’s voice when he assured Brianna that a playground bully was a nobody. She remembered in vivid detail Frank’s guidance that when dealing with a nobody, it was nobler to say and do _nothing_ in response.  Claire was sure Jamie’s response would have been different.  But Claire did not know whether Jamie would have turned heel and taken care of the situation himself or taught Bree how to punch, to bloody a nose.  

Her heart twisted at the recollection of Frank reading to Brianna at night before bed and before prayers.  His steady fingers would rest on each page, guiding Bree over each syllable. Claire wondered which book Jamie would have selected to read with her.

Brianna humored Jamie in some moments – allowing him to _teach_ her something that she already knew.  

How to carry a gun.  How to shoot a squirrel from a tree without hitting it.  How to avoid being mauled by a bear ( _basically: do not shoot unless it’s about to consume you, boots and all_ ).  How to stand and steady a gun, how to crouch and aim, how to fight the fatigue of a heavy weapon weighing down an arm.  

Brianna never told Jamie that Frank had done all of this – taking his daughter to shoot clay pigeons at gun ranges, hunting doves and quail on crisp autumn Saturdays, going to sportsmen’s shows to learn about firearms.

Those questions at night though – sometimes the prospect of having to answer them haunted Claire.  At night, Jamie would marvel about Brianna and _ask ask ask_.  Before Brianna had come to the Ridge, he had of course had questions.  But knowing her, he asked them over and over again, as if having met her brought a new dimension to the answers.

So Claire, her back pressed to her husband’s front, talked about Brianna riding bikes, reading, learning her first words, taking tentative steps.  She would feel his inhale and exhale, even and measured. But on a shuddering breath, her words would fall silent and she would roll in his arms, fingers working to wipe away tears of a whole lifetime with their daughter that was missing.

She left Frank out of it entirely.  There were some things Claire would never say out loud and Jamie would never even know to ask about.  Some things were sacred to Brianna and Claire knew that. She could see a flit of betrayal sometimes cross Brianna’s face – as though by calling Jamie “ _Da_ ” she was doing a disservice to her _Daddy_.

“Ye ken I’d die for ye, both of ye,” Jamie whispered one night when Claire had fallen silent in the hazy half-life between waking and sleep.

Immediately, she came to, lips hovering just a whisper from his. “Jamie Fraser, I know.”

“I cannae say the things I want to her, Claire,” he confessed, his lips moving to the corner of her mouth and pressing there gently.  His words were soft, low, like Claire would have expected from a child about to tell a secret. “I love the lass. Always have.”

“Oh, Jamie,” Claire whispered in response, her voice matching his. “We know. She knows.”

“Aye?” he asked, voice soft.  “I’m not so sure.”

Claire’s hand ran the length of his arm – shoulder to fingers. She allowed her fingers to knot into his until the feelings of the pads of their fingers melted into one another.

“Then just tell her, Jamie.”

“I once told ye that ye are my courage, as I am yer conscience,“ he whispered. “Remember?”

“I could never forget. You said that I am your heart. You said that I am your compassion.” Claire struggled only slightly to remember his exact words before parroting them back to him: “‘We are neither of us whole, alone.’”

“Well, the lass is my reason and my guts, ye ken? Now that she’s here, I need ye just as much. Maybe more, loving ye as I do for giving her to me. But I need her, too.”

The confession was enough to tilt her world. She pushed herself impossibly closer to his body, feeling a surge of gratitude like she had never felt before.

Eventually, sleep pulling her under and warming her limbs, Claire whispered into Jamie’s chest one final thought:

“We all need each other.”


	5. Birthday Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the prompt: _Imagine Jamie giving Brianna a birthday present for the first time in his life._

Sometimes the questions that Jamie asked Claire made her world tilt.  He would draw her hands close to his chest. Warm fingers held cooler fingers over his heart.  His questions would electrify her love for him while simultaneously make her heart ache for each moments that he had lost with Brianna.

After an ellipses of silence, in which she would collect her thoughts and words, she spilled it all onto a quiet canvas.  Sometimes the memories were watery, requiring some measure of artistic license to construct a moment worth telling.  Still other memories were so vivid in her mind that every insignificant detail poured from her, splashing color, bold and intentional.

He wanted to know about their celebrations – the happiest moments.

They covered Christmas. Presents, fat primary-colored bulbs, trees, and sweets.  She explained Thanksgiving. Turkey and tart cranberries, the parade with its balloons and bands.  First days of school and walks to the school bus stop. Tears streaking down cheeks and a pink backpack.  Summer camp. Mosquito bites, skinned knees, and bruised elbows.

And then _birthdays_.  

Jamie wanted to know about Brianna’s birthdays and how they celebrated.

Claire breathed an entire two decades’ worth of information into him, hands absorbing the pounding of his ascending heartbeat.  Her fingers heaved under the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing quickened and slowed, deepening and then going shallow.

Birthdays in Boston were always the same, she explained.

No matter how late her shift at the hospital ended, she always managed to clear the morning of Brianna’s birthday for breakfast and the afternoon for some sort of special trip.  Claire made pancakes and squeezed oranges into a frothy, pulpy juice.  She brought the spread to Brianna’s room on a tray.

“When she was really little, she would pretend to be asleep when I came into the room. Oh, Lord, Jamie… she was so sweet. She would pretend to wake up with this theatrical yawn…. Like she was up for an Oscar–”

“Say again?” he asked. 

Claire could tell, even in the darkness of their bedroom, that his brows were furrowed.  The touch of whisky on their breath made her more flippant with her words – sometimes she avoided saying things about _her time_ (mostly nouns, things he had never seen). She kept herself from telling him just so he would not feel like he was free floating in her stories. She wanted to ground him in the feeling of missing out, not to set him further adrift. But with alcohol in her bloodstream, his own touch heavy with intoxication, she was loose with her words.

“It’s a sort of… well, I guess… a _prize_ for acting… the Academy gives out–”

“Like a university academy?”

Claire sighed gently, arching forward and pressing her lips to his forehead. _Patience_. “No, love. Not academia. Like… a group of important people who make films. You know… _movies_. I told you about–”

“Yes, Claire,” he interrupted. “I ken verra well by now what a movie is.”  

He paused for a long moment and only spoke when it was clear that Claire would not fill the silence. 

“ _ **Anyway**_ … Brianna and her theatrical yawn.”

“Yes, well, uh… I would sing to her and we would eat pancakes with plates resting on our thighs.”

Jamie had always been the storyteller in their relationship – the vocabulary, the voices, the broad gestures, the openness as his entire body got into it, the facial expressions, the ability to captivate and suck everyone in a twenty-foot circumference into his gravitational pull.

But since being back, Claire had, out of the necessity of sharing _everything_ , grown into more of a storyteller.

She wanted him not just to hear it and remember it, but to _see it_  and have something imprinted in his mind.  So she shared the details of ruffled yellow curtains in Brianna’s bedroom, her pajamas with feet, the presents with bright paper and intricate plastic bows affixed with tape, and syrup-sticky fat fingers on a mother’s neck.

“I always had a plan, Jamie. Like… the zoo, a park, the movies, the equestrian center.” For a moment she was taken back, thinking of knee-high boots, a shiny mahogany horse with a jet-black mane. “She was such a beautiful rider – that long rope of hair peeking out of the small helmet, biting down on her lip like she does now. Watch her tomorrow, you’ll see–”

“I ken what ye’re saying,” he said, his voice a little short. “About her lip. She chews on it when she’s thinking.”

There were some things Jamie  _had_ learned about Brianna since she came to the Ridge, and he was always quick to point them out to Claire. He needed to show that _he knew_ their daughter, too.  It was an almost instinct in him to clarify that _he was watching_ , to make it apparent that _he knew things_.

“Yes, well, she’s done that for as long as I can remember.”

Jamie sighed, drawing her hands up to his mouth and pressing his lips over her fingertips.  “More… tell me more, Sassenach. I to ken everything.”

His plea brought tears to the corners of her eyes.  There were not enough lifetimes for her to tell him _everything_ , but she could comply with this simple request to the very best of her ability.  

And so she did.

Claire explained that in her pre-teen years Brianna started to think that birthdays were “ _cheesy_.” Claire told Jamie how she would pretend to think about whether Brianna should be allowed to play hooky from school ( _the answer was always_ “ _yes_ ”).  Making a face to show him how she feigned surprise when Brianna would shriek “it’s my birthday, mama!” brought such a beautiful laugh from Jamie’s mouth that she could not help but to smile. 

His laughter died when he vocalized a question: what role he would have played in this life that occurred without him?

After a moment, a solemnity, he urged her on. 

“It was like she thought I would have a random Tuesday or Wednesday off of work… like I did not have a plan to celebrate.  God, Jamie. It was _precious_.” Claire lost herself in the memory for a moment – trying to put words to it to help him understand – the rush of the pancakes, the warmth of golden sunlight through sheer pink curtains, the softness of their daughter’s cheeks under a damp napkin as Claire wiped away syrup.  

“She had this little birthday crown with fake jewels.  I put it on her bedside table.  When Bree woke up she would go absolutely mad.  She would scream until she woke the whole house.  It was like she thought it had been put there by a birthday fairy–”

“Hmph. Verra Scottish of her.   _Faeries_.”

Claire smiled and pulled their hands towards her face, pressing her lips to his work-worn palms. _Left, then right._

Claire did not disclose that as Brianna got older, the entire thing took on a little less whimsy. Breakfast at the kitchen table instead of in bed. Crown dispatched to a musty box in the basement with remnants of other childhood memories.  She kept to herself that the _show_ became less elaborate as Brianna began to express preference for just spending her day _alone_.  (Shopping, manicures, sitting on the couch, seeing movies with friends after school.)

“And what of… him?”

“What about him?” Claire asked, her voice like a blade. Jamie rarely asked of Frank – knowing that it bothered Claire.  

“The man was her _father_ , Claire.  Dinna pretend as if he was no’ her da.”

Frank also had a routine for her Brianna’s birthdays.  He would show up after work and pile gifts in front of her – hastily-packaged things wrapped in the college newspaper.  One present for each year of Brianna’s life. Records and candy, cash and roller skates, beautiful silk scarves and the keys to a car that they could not afford and had never discussed purchasing for her.  

Claire had a physical reaction to Frank – to his pile of presents, to the fact that while Brianna grew weary of Claire’s birthday routine, she never tired of _his_ birthday attentions.

“I don’t know, Jamie. There were presents.  He loved her.  What do you want me to tell you?”

That was apparently enough because she felt him shrug, the quilt over them shifting as he moved closer to her.

Claire told him about one of her last days in Boston before coming back through the stones. They had a makeshift birthday celebration.   They ate pancakes – Claire mostly pushing hers around on her plate in a flood of syrup.  They wandered Filene’s, touching expensive silk scarves, sniffing imported fragrance on little paper strips, letting the women at the cosmetics counter talk them into shades of lipstick they would never deign to wear on anything other than a special occasion.  Claire left the lipstick in Brianna’s cosmetics case when she went back through the stones.  They tried on jeans and sweaters that Claire would never have an occasion to wear. 

Claire overspent, a function of guilt.

Brianna just accepted, a function of the same.

That evening, Brianna unwrapped presents while they sat cross-legged on the floor.   Claire had jokingly wrapped the deed to the house and various financial miscellany in bright pink and green wrapping paper. Brianna had offered only a short smile and a sigh, setting the documents aside.

Brianna had indulged her mother in this final birthday – blowing out candles, gushing over a record ( _one she already owned_ ), kissing her mama on the cheek and whispering “ _thank you_ ” after they saw a movie.

Telling him these things, Claire felt his ache – felt it in her ribs, in her lungs. It radiated off him; it was contagious. She wanted to burst out with words and touches to fix it, but she couldn’t. So she just nestled closer.  Jamie fell silent, his body settling flush to his wife.  He yearned for the nearness of her. Their hands still twined together and resting between them, they fell asleep.

* * *

Brianna did not know what to expect on her first birthday on the Ridge.  She wondered, in an absent kind of way, whether her birthday would even be a passing concern in their highly-regimented life in this place. After all, there were far more important things to worry about out here – day-to-day survival, planning for tomorrow. It was hardly notable that she had a birthday. It was just one day in a series of three hundred and sixty-five days.

She smelled pancakes when she woke.  Her body warm and slow, protesting at the prospect of rising into the cold room. Blinking, she let the familiarity of the scent wash over and her heart leapt a little.  She had not expected the pancakes, but it was clear from the sweet, bready aroma, that Claire was attempting them on the Ridge. She gave her body a quick wipe down with a rag and lukewarm water before dressing, arranging her hair in a thick braid that wrapped around her hairline.

“The birthday girl!” Claire sang when she heard footsteps.  The fact that her mama could identify her footfall from the others who lived at the Ridge made her smile.  Claire was crouched in front of the fireplace, a wooden utensil working at the edges of a pancake cooking on cast iron over a low, almost-extinguished fire.

“Thanks, mama.” Brianna cleared her throat; her voice was stiff from a night of disuse.

“I’m going to give you a birthday kiss as soon as I finish up with this – cooking these without the benefit of a regulated flame… well… the animals will have a charred treat later.”

Brianna mused momentarily that her smile might crack her entire face apart.

When Jamie joined them, he kissed his daughter on the top of her head.  “Happy birthday, Brianna.”  

Brianna’s heart skipped a little at the phrase, her name still unusual and startling in his accent. It rebounded as an echo in her ears.  “Thanks, Da. Another year.”

“Och, aye, weel, when ye get to my age ye’re going to realize each year’s a blessing, lass.”  

Jamie settled in the chair next to her, reaching for a chunk of the salty ham that Claire had fried until the skin blistered.  Claire could tell that he had an absolute war in his head as they settled in to their first birthday breakfast together as a complete family.

The pancakes were similar to her memories, but they drenched with honey and tart autumn berries instead of syrup and butter. Fresh, frothy milk stood in for the juice. And it was perfect.

Table cleared and morning chores done, a quiet Sunday unfolded like many other quiet Sundays. With a kiss, fingers lingering behind Claire’s ear, Jamie excused himself and slipped out of the house. “Dinna fash,” he had whispered when her mouth began to quirk with a question.

He returned and just watched them through the window. 

They were his whole life.  Bree was fiery and animated, hands moving and eyes rolling. Claire laughed, her fingers working across the spine of the book she was reading.  

When he entered, arms behind his back, he was suddenly nervous. He had been to war twice.  He had lived in a hell on earth, watching men starve and be taken by all manner of disease.  He had lost the love of his life and been found again by her.  He had children stripped from him – at birth, by circumstance, through time.  

And yet this moment – a simple one that she had shared before with another man she called “daddy” – was almost too much for him.

“I’ve got somethin’ for ye, Brianna,” he started. The undercurrent quaking in his voice made Claire’s ears prick up.  She set her book side and leaned forward to watch him.  Brianna turned on the floor and Jamie knelt in front of her, bringing the most beautiful bow Claire had ever seen from behind his back.

It was long and gracefully arced with striated tones where the tree’s rings had been sliced by a knife to carve it and mold it into the perfect curve.  Rawhide was drawn tight between each end.

Jamie plucked the string with fingertips and it sang with strength as it snapped back between the handholds. The sound reverberated with the promise that it would kill for its owner, that the power it harnessed could protect and provide.

“Did you make this, Da?” The astonishment in Brianna’s voice was something that Claire had not heard in years – probably since before she was a teenager.

 It was pure wonderment at the gift.  

“Och, aye.  I ken it’s no’ much, but–”

“It’s _beautiful_.”  

She was all wide eyes, parted lips, mouth upturned at the corners.  She accepted the bow from him as he held it extended it to her.  He slipped a leather bag from his shoulder and removed a handful of arrows – obviously handmade but sturdy, long, and imposing with a pheasant fletching.

Jamie pressed a thumb on the tip of the arrow.  A drop of red bloomed into a globe on the tip and he brought it to his lips.  

“Be careful, these’re quite sharp.”

Resting the bow against her shoulder, Brianna took the arrow, turning it over and over in her hand, running her finger tips reverently along the dusky feathers.

“I’ve done a little practicing with it, just to make sure it’s a braw weapon…”  Jamie’s voice trailed off, unable to take his eyes from his daughter’s face.

“Yeah?” Brianna asked, turning her attention to the bow again and laying the arrow across it, just to see its geometry.  “And…?”

“Och, weel, ye’ll have no problem killin’ with it.” He laughed when her face broke with a full grin. 

“Da… it’s beautiful.” She set the bow aside and leaned forward on her knees, winding her arms around his shoulders.  “I’ve not done much bow hunting, but I cannot wait.  Do you have one? Will you show me?”

“I’ve had one for a while, lass,” he said, absorbing the warmth of her embrace as long as she would allow him the moment. The moment imprinted itself on him - the smell of her hair, the feeling of her long thin arms, the swell of pride in his gut for creating a moment.

“Can we go out and do a little hunting then?”

Exhaling deeply, feeling like he knew at least _one more thing_ firsthand, he nodded.  “Of course, lass.” 


End file.
